'Overlord' Volume 13 just released in Japan and it contains news pertaining to both the 'Overlord' Season 3 anime and the light novel series.

'Overlord' Volume 13 just released in Japan and it contains news pertaining to both the 'Overlord' Season 3 anime and the light novel series.

Anime fans looking forward to the Overlord Season 3 anime can breathe easy knowing that the series will be in good hands. Sometimes when multiple seasons are planned out, a different studio will be hired by an anime production committee, but in this case, studio Madhouse has been confirmed to be returning to produce Overlord 3.

This bit of news comes thanks to author Kugane Maruyama’s comments in Overlord Volume 13, which came out in Japan on April 27, 2018. Some Japanese readers have already finished reading the book and begun to share details in English on Twitter and Reddit.

Besides confirming studio Madhouse’s ongoing role in the anime production, the author also noted that he is hoping to release Overlord Volume 14 sometime in 2019. He did not specify an exact release date for the novel since he apparently “has something else to write before that, therefore even he himself isn’t sure how things will go.”

This level of uncertainty should not be too surprising to readers of the Overlord light novel series. Kugane had originally planned on releasing Overlord Volume 13 in December of 2017, but it was delayed until today. The book was also quite thick, numbering 574 pages compared to the 410 pages of Volume 12. The story for the light novel series is based on the Japanese-language Overlord web novel, but the light novels and the web novel began to diverge significantly beginning with Volume 10 so it might be assumed that more effort is necessary to produce the newer books.

The cover for ‘Overlord’ Volume 13.
so-bin/Enterbrain

There are multiple fan-based English translation projects that have translated all the way up through Overlord Volume 12. However, Skythewood announced that they have discontinued the fan English translation project due to Yen Press acquiring the international English publishing right. In addition, several popular manga sites have taken down their Overlord manga translation and Japan has been cracking down on piracy in 2018.

It has been officially confirmed that the Overlord Season 3 release date is scheduled for July of 2018, although the exact Overlord Season 3 premiere date has not been announced. To put things into perspective, the Overlord Season 3 anime is only expected to cover the events of volumes 7 through 9 (for spoilers, please see this article). The Overlord manga series is even further behind since the comics haven’t even caught up with the end of Overlord Season 2 yet.